Twisp of Fate

It’s been a bit of a mad whirlwind the last week or so.  The weekend before this last one, we went over to the coast for 3 nights for mostly social reasons.  First up was my “little” brother’s 60th birthday, which he didn’t want a big deal made of.  His wife had a nice dinner party at their home on Camano Island,  and we went down with my dad, then spent the night up at dad’s house in Anacortes.  There were only about 10 of us – the food was fabulous and it was a nice laid-back evening.

Family photo-op at the birthday dinner

The next day (Sunday) we headed down to Seattle to attend the wedding of a lovely young woman who worked on several of the research projects I was involved in at the UW, back when I was gainfully employed as a computer programmer/data analyst.  These were marriage and family studies in the Psychology Dept and later Family & Child Nursing.  It was an honor to be invited and also a wonderful opportunity to re-connect with some of my friends and colleagues whom I hadn’t seen in 6 years.

Stephanie & Braulio

My buddies from the old days!

CB with the happy couple

The next day, our friend Stan drove up from Portland to meet us and bring us the rest of the display cases that we hadn’t been able to fit into the truck and U-Haul on the trip to Portland.  It was really nice of him to do that, as he had been hoping to pick up furniture and other things from Seattle people who show at The Real Mother Goose, and it turned out no-one had things for him to pick up, or they were out of town.  After meeting up in Ballard and transferring the goods from his van to our truck, we had lunch at Ray’s Boathouse with Rick’s mom and sister, then headed home to the Methow, arriving about 8 pm.

In the intervening week, we have been trying to get work done (in the shop, for Rick) and also get ready for our annual meeting with our accountant.  So I have been putting in long hours at the computer, entering things into Quickbooks and pulling together other information.

On Friday, I headed up a painting project at the Winthrop Gallery to renew the gift shop area.  I had some helpers, of course, but it was a long day on Friday pulling everything off the shelves, moving out the old display cases, putting 2 coats of paint on the walls, cleaning, then moving in the new display cases.  On Saturday I went back in and spent about 4 hours putting all the stock back on the shelves and arranging the displays.  It looks so much better!  But I failed to take a single picture.

Friday night, despite being really tired from the long day, we decided to go back into Winthrop to the Old Schoolhouse Brewery – because Terry Lee Hardesty was playing with the band that night.  Terry Lee lives in Twisp now, but he has had a long and varied music career, including playing and recording with Merle Haggard.  He is a fabulous guitar player, and has a deep mellow voice.  You have to like country music to like Terry Lee – but he can also rock it, trust me.

Terry Lee and Rick

Well, that’s life in the Methow – always something new and different!